Tesseract Creep
by Sam.Arronax
Summary: In the same vein as The Zerg Swarm by East Bridge, what happens when the entirety of the Zerg Collective crashes on Earth, in the form of a single Larva? Well, A kid finds it and takes over the world, of course! Has a shameless self-insert with changed names and acceptable breaks from reality, but hopefully with an original concept. First three chapters are up, please review!
1. Chapter 1

**Tesseract Creep**

**1**

Note: This is based off of StarCraft, and will use several concepts and descriptions from _The Zerg Swarm _by East Bridge, mostly accidental due to the similar concept of the story. I will be making an attempt to distance the two noticably, by switching settings, charactors, method of infestation, and quite a lot of other things as well. If asked by East Bridge, I will take this down. The highest form of flattery is imitation, and I'm merely attempting to use a nugget of a concept I came up with, refined by that story, to prove myself better than everyone else who tried (Rather blatantly) to copy him. Oh yeah, StarCraft 1/2 is copyright Blizzard Entertainment, blahblahblah Please don't sue me.

On a night rather like the one when this story started being written, in a house exactly the same down to the tiniest detail the same as the one where our protaganist sat, typing, in the city of Las Vegas which was exactly the same as… well, pretty much any night…

A meteorite fell. It wasn't very remarkable, and it wasn't very large. The people who saw it coming saw it as a blip, and only for a second. NASA thought it burn up in the atmosphere. Every other government agency informed about it thought the same. CERN didn't give a shit, as meteorites weren't their business, and it wasn't heading for them.

Regardless, it fell. It lasted much longer than anyone thought a house-sized meteorite would. But like any other, it broke into fragments, and those fragments still lasted longer than most people thought they would. Even then, they all burned up, reduced to ashes and gases and molecules that preoceeded to be whisked away on the wind.

All but one.

Let's go back to our protaganist. At the time of this writing, he is a fourteen year old, straight, Caucasian male. He enjoys Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett's books, video games, the Internet, and of course, StarCraft. He was awake at Two in the morning, typing at his computer, with a severe case of writer's block, when he heard a strange sound from outside.

It was of course, the meteorite, but he didn't know that. All he knew was that he heard what sounded like a bomb being dropped. The house shook, books fell off shelves, the power went out, and a massive boom cracked every window within fifty meters. Car alarms sounded throughout the neighbourhood, and Dogs barked incessently. Several news sources claimed that the US had been bombed, the claims were quickly denied by the president and all candidates, various conspiracy theorists made misspelled blog posts about government coverups, and someone actually thought to go out and check if it was a missile or not.

But of course, the first people out in the impact zone were the family who lived in the house and the immediate naighbours. The family who lived in the house shall go misnamed, and instead referred to as the Arronaxes, and all family members shall have different names. Our protaganist is named Sam. Stepping out into the backyard in a heavy green coat meant for polar exploration, he waved the tiny blue flashlight attached to his housekeys across the crater, and waved the crowbar in his other hand from side to side, following the light.

He was completely unprepared for what happened next. His family was behind him, and his dad was telling him to get back, so that the police or someone could look at it, or much more likely so that he could get to it first. He stepped closer, prompting another outburst from his dad, who stepped up and was about to put his hand on Sam's shoulder, when Sam stopped him with two sentences.

"Stop. Do you hear that?"

And then Sam heard so much more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Tesseract Creep**

**2**

It wasn't a sentence, not even a properly voiced thought, but nonetheless, it shocked him, as the intent was clear. Whatever it was, it wanted him to stop everyone else, and come forward, alone.

"Everyone. Don't move. I'll be back in a-" he was cut off by his sister, Ophelia, yelling, "Are you okay?"

He was taken aback. "Yes, why?" "Because you've been standing there for about a minute with this dopey expression on your face." Grimacing, he repeated. "I'm fine. Everyone, stay here. I'll be back in a minute or two."

"The hell you will. I'm your father and-" Sam interrupted him. "And I've got the crowbar, so I can handle any facehuggers that try to get me. Trust me, and don't get any closer." He turned away, and slowly, hesitantly walked towards the ring of dirt around the meteor. Cresting the ring, he slid down the side in a small rockslide of dirt. Finding a crack in the rock, he placed the end of the crowbar in, and pulled, splitting it open in a few hard tugs.

"Are you alright?" His mother called, from outside the crater.

"Fine. Just knocking some loose bits off." He responded, placing his hands on the edges of the hole, and with a little effort, widenening the hole. He pulled his flashlight back out, and shined it inside.

He wasn't a big fan of bugs, so he jumped when he saw the creature inside. But than he felt the prescence again… This time it was more coherent, and he realized it had never left, it had always been in his mind, going through his memories like the pages of a book, and learning. It spoke, not vocally, but inside his mind. It wasn't a single voice, he realized, but a collection of voices. It also gave hima bit of a migraine.

"I'm sorry my appearance disturbs you, but really, there are bigger problems right now. Quickly, hide us. All will be explained in time, but for now, we must hide and regain our strength."

The creature inside resembled a centipede, but much, much, larger, with massive mandibles, and two large black eyes that appeared to stare into his soul, and likely were.

"Hey, Sam, are you alright?" His dad had apparently decided not to wait any longer, worried for his safety, and was quickly coming towards the crater.

Frank Arronax reached the ring of dirt, and quickly crested it, allowing him to see his son crouched next to the strange rock.

"Kid, maybe you should just get away from that thing. One of the neighbours got a call, and the police is going to be here soon to quarantine it 'til someone from NASA gets here."

Sam straightened up, holding his crowbar. "Alright. Doesn't look very dangerous anyway." He started heading back to the house. "We probably shouldn't touch it anymore anyway." Speaking to the neighbours, he said, "You can go home! Just a perfectly ordinary space rock! Scoot! Someone's gotta get the power back on for the neighbourhood!" As if on cue, the lights in the house blinked back on, quickly followed by the streetlights, than the rest of the houses. He motioned towards the light with a smirk, before heading back inside. His Mother, Cristina Arronax, dragged Ophelia inside as well, finally followed by Frank, after giving the meteorite another look. The door closed, and eventually, the neighbours dispersed. What business occurred normally at two AM resumed. For most of the neighbourhood, this meant sleeping.

One room of the Arronax household, however, stayed lit, with the curtains drawn…


	3. Chapter 3

**Tesseract Creep**

**3**

Inside the Arronax household, a single light was still on. Despite Frank's insistance to the contrary.

"Listen, it's three in the morning. GO TO BED." Sam was arguing with him about this point. "I could say the same. Listen, I was up in the first place because I was writing, and I had writers' block. I think it's safe to say I don't anymore, after that!" His father leaned against the door, and looked at Sam with that look that all fathers have. The one that means, "I'm right. I know I'm right. Are you still arguing? Stop it, and do what I say."

After an eternity of about fifteen seconds, Frank finally relented. "Fine. But just for an hour. If you can't write it in that time, leave yourself a note." He then left, and went back down the hallway.

Sighing thankfully, Sam shut the door, locked it, and sat on his bed. He took several deep breaths, before standing up, and yanking off his coat and muttering loudly, "GetoutgetoutgetoutGETOUT…" The creature from the meteorite fell out onto the bed, and huddled into itself in an attempt to make itself look smaller.

Sam stared at it, and before he could speak, he heard the collective of voices, all saying, "We apologize for the inconvenience and uncomfort, Overmind." He sat down, turning slightly to rest against the bed. He easily slid back into the mental communication, comforted by the voices. "It… It's nothing. Just… Try not to do that again." Something the voices said caught his attention. "Wait… Overmind?" The voices responded, again with their alluring tone. "Indeed. We searched your mind, and found information of us already implanted. This game you call… StarCraft? It tells of a species called the Zerg, and for all intents and purposes, we are the Zerg swarm."

Sam placed his head upon the bed, facing the ceiling, and closed his eyes. "Unbelievable. Am I in a bad fanfic?" The voices, or the swarm, as he was beginning to think of them, seemed worried. "Yes. But leave the fourth wall alone, and listen! We are the swarm, but we were destroyed. As a last ditch effort, we had to put our collective consiousness into this Larva." Sam remembered from the game that Larva were the smallest unit of Zerg, not even able to attack. Looking again at those mandibles, he started to doubt his in-game knowledge. They spawned from the Hatchery, and its upgraded forms. The second they were no longer on creep, they died. Again, obviously not true.

"We cannot survive in this form. We require one with more biomass, or we will die within what we calculate to be thirty-two earth hours from now. The entity, nay, the collective that is the Zerg swarm, will disappear forever, never to return save for divine intervention. This is a once-in-a-lifetime oppurtunity. Will you take it?"

The realization hit Sam like a truckload of bricks. He always, without fail, played Zerg whenever he could when He played StarCraft, and now he could do it for real… Or it would die in thirty-two hours. His life would be like so many others, with no purpose, or worse, his only purpose a desk job that earned little money and accumulated only misery?

He knew his choice.

"I'll take it." He said, with only a moment's hesitation.

"Excellent." The collective said. "We will transfer in the morning." Anticipating his question, it answered, "We cannot do it now, for you are tired and this will tax your abilities to their fullest. Get a good night's sleep, We shall commence tomorrow, whenever you're ready."

Nodding, Sam gently picked up the entire Zerg Collective and set it down on his bookshelf. He slid into his covers and quickly fell asleep.

He would have a big day tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Tesseract Creep**

**4**

Sam slowly awoke, opening his eyes. The sixty-centimeter Centipede lying on his chest quickly sped up his return to consciousness.

"Gah! Christ! Don't DO that!" he jumped out of bed, launching the Zerg swarm a half a meter into the air. He laid back on the bed, breathing heavily.

"We apologize, Overmind. We saw that you were anxious to start soon, so we thought it best to get adrenaline into your bloodstream. Simple, but effective." It crawled off, bunching itself up, and launching itself onto a nearby chair. "We have searched your mind for an ideal location. There is an empty house down the street from here. We must go there, and then we shall transfer."

"Ugh…Okay, lemme put…I dunno, some boots on or something…Wait, were you waiting there all night?" He slid on some plain brown hiking boots, still staring at the large insect.

"That is irrelevant. Shall we go?"

"Sure… Wait, I need an excuse…" His Mom was already awake, as was his Sister. He had hidden the Larva inside the lining of his coat again, and on the way out, merely said, "Going to the store. Be back in a bit." As he opened the door, he jumped as his Sister had grabbed the back of his coat, very nearly grabbing the Larva, or worse, crushing it.

"Phel, let go of the coat!" Ophelia jumped back, startled by his sudden outburst.

"Jeez, Sam, what's wrong? Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?" Sam had by now turned around, and muttered "You could say that…." He headed back out the door, ignoring his mom and sister alternating between "What?" and "You're muttering again…"

He walked out the door, and looked behind him to make sure the door had closed, before walking down the street. It was morning, but already the tempeture was well into the nineties. Las Vegas was not a place to be wearing a coat as heavy as his. Only wisps of clouds hung in the sky, a sky coloured blue, but a blue that, had it been painted, would have been heavily mixed with the yellow paint beforehand.

Moving quickly across the street and down a few houses, he arrived at the empty house. Rumour around the neighbourhood was that it was cursed, as no one who had moved in for more than a month. However, the real reason was likely the fact that one of their neighbours had a car repair business, and whatever cars he wasn't actively fixing and could move from in front of his house, he kept in the backyard. Looking back on it, it explained why the guy had gotten arrested a few times.

Checking the gates to make sure they were closed, Sam climbed onto the wall the gate was set into and boosted himself over, hopping down on the opposite side. He headed around to the barren backyard, and carefully crawled through the broken glass door. The house had always creeped him out. Standing in a kitchen devoid of all appliances, tiling, and furniture, he felt that feeling he always had. That feeling that the Slenderman was watching from around a corner, or at least a bad-tempered homeless person.

Reaching into the coat and pulling out the Larva, he held it in his hands, hoping that the comfort of having something else in the house that wouldn't try to kill him would weigh out the discomfort of holding a giant insect. It didn't, but it helped a little.

"So, uh, anywhere in particular we should do this?" Sam asked the insect, keeping his eyes on the doorways. "Not anywhere specific, but somewhere where sound won't penetrate too much would be best." Glancing at the Larva, he asked out loud, "Why?" The Larva said, with total honesty, "You're not a trained psychic, so at best, It's going to hurt quite a bit."

"And the worst-case scenario?" Sam asked, carefully.

"Your head explodes. We both die." Seeing his suddenly sared expression, the Zerg Swarm tried to comfort him. "Don't worry, that shouldn't happen unless you have absolutely no psychic abilities whatsoever. And everyone has at least a little."

"Okay… Uh, upstairs, one of the bedrooms, I should think." Watching the top of the stairs, he slowly climbed up the stairs, still paranoid that something would attack him. He reached the top of the creaking stairs, and started down the hallway. As he got to the last door, he paused.

"Is…Is something wrong?"

"No…I just got this feeling…It's nothing. Let's go." He slowly opened the door, making it creak, and slowly looked inside. He fullyy expected something to jump out at him, or to see some stone angels, or even see a dead man with a hypodermic needle sticking out of his arm, but there was nothing. In fact, there was only a chair, covered in a white sheet to keep the dust off.

"The chair is perfect. Sit down, and hold the larva up to your forehead." Sam sat without removing the sheet, and did so.

"Good. Hold still, and prepare yourself."

"For what?"

"For this."

And then Sam went completely insane.

(Hey everyone, nice cliffhanger, huh? Anyway, don't expect these to update anything close to regularly. I'll try to get one or two out every once in a while, and they will be gradually longer. Don't worry about it, If I have anything come up, I'll be sure to mention it. Thanks.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Tesseract Creep**

**5**

The creation of a new Overmind is not an easy one. In perfect conditions, where the Zerg swarm had control of at least one planet, than a dying overmind simply combined all the Zerg organisms (Usually spurred by multiple Cerebrates combining) in a certain area into a mass of flesh. This process usually took a week or so, where the old Overmind died. The new Overmind would be controlled by one of the organisms used, and upon creation, would take the undecayed memories and the unused consiousness from the Zerg swarm not yet created that still inhabited the corpse, combining them all into a new entity that became the new Overmind.

These were not perfect conditions, and as such, all three entities involved had to improvise slightly.

Sam instantly went insane, shattering everything in his mind and shifting it around to make room for as much of the Zerg swarm as he could fit.

The Zerg Collective, sensing this, took the shattered components of what had been, and still was, Sam, and put them back together as best it could, and then formed the mentality of the Zerg around it, changing both of them.

Sam didn't have nearly enough space, and wouldn't survive if the Zerg Collective had tried to cram the memories of every Overmind in, so it had to lose those. The last Overmind had been a bloodthirsty, psychotic, monster who had been destroyed by a particulary lucky Protoss fleet.. Really, the only thing that made it in were the collective consciousness of about half the swarm, and it couldn't bring their memories, creating a blank slate on which had only a few Zerg organism's DNA and Sam on it.

Finally, because it was no longer controlled by the Collective and hadn't yet received any orders from it's Overmind, the Larva crawled out of Sam's hands, landing on the floor, and crawling under the chair.

Sam was catatonic for a few minutes. He finally snapped out of it, and looked at his hands. Something was…wrong. Different. Like anyone else, when he was looking at something, he just looked. Now, he had to focus, like he was always somewhat distracted, like he had to look at something, and then shake himself out of of it to actually look at it.

He concentrated on his hands. They looked normal, but then he stopped concentrating on it, and he started seeing all the little things. They were in no way callused, and had creases where he held onto things. His thumbnails were perfectly square, with the only curve at the tip of his thumb. Looking at them from the end, they were perfectly flat on the top, bending suddenly, giving them a flattened appearance, not unlike an upside-down pentagram.

The back of his hands were bony, like a skeleton that had stuck his hands in a barrel of yellowish-pinkish glue. He moved his fingers, and watched his tendons twitch, and realizing that he wasn't moving his fingers, he was moving the tendons that they were attacheds to, and it was amazing that he could hold anything, he was so uncoordinated, and…

"OVERMIND!" The familiar voice startled him, because it was no longer coming from somewhere else. It was now coming from inside his own mind. "Overmind, you're overdosing on Dopamine. I'm going to try and correct it, but you must stop screaming!" Sam suddenly realized that his throat was raw. Suddenly he could hear again, as if he couldn't before, and he realized he had been screaming the whole time. It came to a coughing choke, dropping off to a whine before ceasing entirely.

"Good. Let's try this…" Sam felt…something shift inside his skull, and slowly, the colours that reality had taken, oversaturated and vibrant, slowly drifted back to their normal hue. Almost. They still weren't quite right, but this wasn't a complete sensory overload, it just made everything look a little more interesting than it probably was.

"Overmind? Can you hear me?" Sam realized that the voices that had been previously coming from the Larva were now coming from his own mind. He was the Overmind. He had the entire Zerg Collective inside his mind. "Overmind? You have not been trained. Follow my instructions. Remember that Larva?" Sam nodded. "Good. Think of it, concentrate on it. Good! Now, try to figure out where it is."

Sam recalled it, and the instant he did, he felt it's prescence, under the chair. He reached under and picked it up. Holding it, he looked at it again. Before, it had been just a horrifyingly huge bug. Now, it looked almost… Cute. He felt kinship with it, like it was something he knew, something he was friends with, that he had helped exist.

"Good, Overmind. What you are feeling now is kinship, because you two are very nearly the same thing. You are feeling it through The Connection. Through The Connection, you can feel any Zerg creature that considers it self to be part of your swarm." Staring at the Larva, he noticed two stripes on both sides of it's spine change colour, into a pleasant Sky Blue.

"Why did it change colour?" He thought to the voice in his head that he had dubbed "The Collective". "Because it is remembering the first time it saw you. When you crouched by our Seeder, forced it open, and shined a light in. That light was what you call Sky Blue, so the first thing the swarm thinks of when it remembers you is that colour. Now, we are still weak. We require sustenance, and we must recover our DNA strands. We have lost most of those that were in the Larva, so we must go back to the meteorite. There were other Larva in there, and we can get the information from them. But first, we need a way to process said information. We need a base."

Sam looked around the empty room, in the empty house, that no one would miss and few would enter. "Will this do? As a framework, until we can create a base proper?"

"Yes, Overmind. We can inhabit this place. We require a Larva producer first, create that, and we will disperse as well. You will no longer have to keep the collective inside your mind, which will free up space for the DNA. In time, you can put that information somewhere else too. For now, however? Focus on the Larva. One last thing before you mutate it. Focus on it, completely. Think of yourself as the Larva, and then close your eyes."

He did so, and then opened them again, to see…Himself. He was looking through the Larva's eyes. He imagined himself nack in his head, and opened his eyes. Eveything was back to normal, and the Larva in his hands appeared to snap out of a trance.

"Good, Overmind. You may "piggyback' in other Zerg organisms' minds, and see what they see, think what they thnk. Most don't mind, but some of the more intelligent ones get annoyed if you do it too much, or at inconvenient times. This will get easier later. Now, tell it to become a "Larva Producer." Use those exact words, and imagine an organism that creates Larva. Then think of where you want to place it. It will emit what would be in your measurements… 5 meters of Creep in a rough circle, barring objects getting in the way. I recommend the living room."

Sam focused on the Larva, and thought: "Larva Producer. Living room." The Zerg Collective reached into his mind, and using the easiest way to interact with his mind, created a wireframe of the Producer, not unlike the game. He walked down the hall, and slowly walked down the stairs, entering the living room, and considering the best place to put the tiny structure. He finally picked a spot under a table, so that it would be at least somewhat hidden. Following his order, the Larva jumped out of his hands and landed on the floor, crawling under the sheets, and then the table.

Looking under, he saw the Larva spit some webbing around the underside of the desk, before wrapping it around itself and inflating it with a reddish-pinkish liquid that mostly obscured his view of the inside. It obscured his view, but he saw the Larva expanding slightly by the second whenever it swam close to the side he was on.

"Overmind, when it finishes in approximately half an hour, it's going to require nutrition for the Larva. While it's mutating, we should acquire foodstuffs from your house."

"Alright, then." Sam mentally said to the voice. Now that he was inside the house, he merely unlocked the door. He cracked the door open and peeked out to make sure no one would see him leave. Satisfied, he stepped out and shut the now-unlocked door behind him. He walked down the street, admiring how different the sky looked. It was still morning, but now closer to noon than sunrise. His mom would be worried. Stepping inside his home, he started "Hey Mom, sorry I took so long, I, uh… ran into a friend." Which wasn't completely untrue.

He was stopped however when he saw two men in black suits talking to his mom. Who the hell were these guys? Than one of them looked at him, and said "Hey kid!"

"Yes?" Sam replied cautiously.

"What did you take from that meteorite?"


	6. Chapter 6

****(Sorry for the delay. Our house had a small flooding problem, which is impressive, due to to the whole "living in a desert" thing. Anyway, on to...)

**Tesseract Creep**

**6**

"T…took from the meteorite?" Sam sputtered out, suddenly afraid. Had these agents, these men in black, these G-Men found him out? Would he be captured? Killed? Dissected?

"Ah, don't mind him…Sam, right? He's just joshin' ya." The second Agent said, before turning back to continue talking to his mom. Sam noticed he had a sticker on his lapel, that said "HELLO, MY NAME IS _Smith_" on it. The first Agent (Who had a matching sticker labeled _Jones_) chuckled to himself, and turned around as well. Was… was that their idea of an introduction? They had to get out more.

Walking the other way around, past the TV amd his sister watching a show on the TV. Some nickolodeon show. He hadn't bothered to learn which one, they were all the same. Passing her and proceeding into the kitchen, he went to the cupboard.

Canned food? Bread? Cereal? Peanut butter? He wasn't actually sure what a Zerg organism would eat, whether it would chew through metal or just dissolve it, or whether it could eat it at all. After a few seconds of deliberation, he just decided to grab some of everything. It wasn't too hard, the cupboard had needed to be cleaned out anyway.

Grabbing a shopping bag from the cluttered diner table, he stuffed everything he had picked in. "Hey mom, I saw that they were taking cans of food for charity out at Smiths. I'm gonna take this stuff we're never gonna eat and donate it." His mom didn't bother to look twice, except to check none of her precious foreign foods wern't in the bag. Ironically, they should have been the first candidates for any donations. He was about to walk out the door when…

"Hey Sam!" one of the Agents yelled out. "You like that sciencey crap, right?" Sam was perturbed at how much the Agents could possibly know about him. How much had his mother told them? "Sure, why?" The other Agent responded, this time. "There's gonna be a guy from NASA coming to look at the space rock. Only chance to talk to him, maybe get a picture with the rock."

Sam headed back out the door. "Sure, I'll try to get back in time." Outside the house, Sam noticed a plain white van he hadn't spotted before parked in front of his house. Walking past, he saw there was another agent listening to the radio, with a nametag labeled _Brown_.

He passed the van, and checked to see that the Agent wasn't paying attention before heading down the street. He could only hope that the Agent wasn't looking when he ducked into the not-quite-empty house.

He shut the door behind him, and locked it. Walking back to the desk he had told the Larva to take root in, he heard a noise that most would have described as "squishy and sickening" but to Sam felt… comforting. He looked under the desk, where the chair or the person in the chair would usually sit, and found an unusual sight.

The Larva had grown to fit the space, and now sported what looked like a liquid-filled sac, with three tubes leading inside, around, and back inside, like some kind of organic engine, but squishy. One tube pointed upward, and had expanded from under the desk to hook itself over the top of the desk. The end of it looked somewhat like a Barnacle from the Half-life games, had it been flipped upside down, and minus the tongue. Another tube, emerging from the bottom of the sac, was short but wide. As he watched, the end opened up and spat out a Larva onto the floor, which appeared to be covered in a thick purple carpet that seemed to be oozing from the third tube, which he could only assume was Creep. There wasn't a lot of it right now, but he could see that at the rate it was going, it would expand and cover the floor of the living room in an hour or two.

He reached out, and plucked a small pile of creep from the point on the carpet it had covered. After a second, more Creep flowed into the hole, covering it back up, as if it had never been removed. The Creep in his hand felt rubbery, but also like a liquid. He had to shift how his hand was positioned constantly so that the Creep wouldn't flow out. It was as if someone had combined a slinky, play-doh, rubber, and the kind of goo made by kindergardners. It was an experience that was entirely new and hard to describe except in oversimplified terms.

He dropped the Creep in his hand back onto the floor, and felt it hit. He could feel throught the Creep, which didn't surprise him much, after seeing through a Larvas eyes.

The Collective interrupted his study of the Creep. "Overmind, that producer is surviving for now off the… crud, to use a human word, in the carpet. However, it cannot do so for much longer, so If you could feed it…?" Sam nodded, and started digging through the bag. He was pulling out the fourth can when he realized he hadn't brought a can opener. He swore quietly. That would limit what he could feed this thing. Digging again, he pulled out a plastic jug of milk, and after a moment of hesitation, poured it into the waiting mouth.

Slowly, as not to drown it, (Could it drown?) He emptied the jug in. Looking through the bag again, he pulled out a box of Oatmeal, and poured the flakes in. Smacking his lips, he suddenly realized he could taste the milk and Oatmeal. It mainly made him hungry, so he pulled out a half-eaten box of Pizza (His mother hadn't looked very closely) and bit into the rubbery slice. He tossed another into the eagerly awaiting mouth beside him.

The creature digested quickly, and Creep started spilling from the tube faster than before. Another two Larva fell from the large center tube. Having satiated it for the moment, Sam ignored the Producer and focused on the Larva. The expanding Creep gave him more options for structure placement, and he could tell he needed two things. A proper Hatchery, and a Spawning Pool. The abandoned house had a pool that had, at some point, actually held water. He could put the Sapwning pool in there, so he had that covered. But where could he put the Hatchery?

He looked around the house. Well… Zerg could infest structures, couldn't they? It had to be somewhat easier than creating a brand new hatchery out of nothing…

Looking back at the Larva, he picked one and told it to mutate into a Drone. He was lucky the desk was the only furniture in the room. The Larva obeyed, and expanded into an egg, which was as transparent as the one earlier, but green. He could catch the Larva swimming around the egg, looking almost…happy, swimming around as it grew. Within about ten minutes, it had expanded and filled the entire egg, and he could see it would splatter a bit when the larva hatched. He took a step back, just as a claw punctured the membrane from the inside to the outside. It started cutting downwards, and the fluid spilled out onto the Creep surrounding it, which appeared to soak up the liquid, and dissolve bits of the egg that fell off.

Out of the egg crawled a beetle-shaped thing, if beetles had webbed legs that were connected by a sort of membrane, and were roughly the size of a queen-size bed. It's eyes were black and large, and piggybacking inside it's head, Sam realized he could see almost the entire room from the one location. It had mandibles for a mouth, two to be precise, completing the insectoid image. It had two claws that appeared to be sharp as razors, but he had no doubt that it could pick up a stick of butter more carefully than any human, or any animal on earth, for that matter.

He suddenly realized it was looking at him, as if expecting instructions. He looked at it, and mentally told it to create an easier way to digest food. It appeared to think for a moment, and then crawled to the center of the living room, before digging out a small hollow, through the carpet, throught the concrete, and slightly pushing the Creep out of the hole. Finally, it settled inside, and created another small bubble that it sat in. It was just getting into the stride of it when…

"Sam? This is Agents Smith and Jones. Are you in here? We'd like to ask you a few questions."


	7. Chapter 7

Tesseract Creep

**7**

Agents Smith and Jones had decided to track down the Arronax kid again. His mother said he was acting odd, as he almost never went outside twice in one day, nor had ever wanted to donate to charity unless he got something in return. They'd asked a few neighbors, and one said that he'd hopped the wall of this house earlier.

Agent Smith knocked again. "Sam! Come on, man, we know you're in there. We're not gonna arrest you, we just wanna check everything out one last time!" He could hear the kids whispering something. What was he trying to hide? A girlfriend? A pet? Something worse?

Agent Jones knocked this time, much harder than his partner. "SAM! Come on, man, don't make us have to break the door down…"

"Jeez, alright. What do you guys want?" Sam finally opened the door a foot. Agent Jones could easily see that the kid was holding something behind his back.

"Sam, just open the door next time, alright? Anyway, we just want to know what's up. Why'd you break in, and what are you doing in here?" Agent Smith said. Agent Jones, however, looked inside the house, and saw the …thing pulsating on the floor, and realized he had a code red.

"Sam… What have you done…?" Jones said, slowly backing away. Smith was still confused. Suddenly, the kid yelled "Hey, look, a monkey with six arms!" and threw a giant insect right at Jones.

Jones had never liked insects. He grew up in Australia, where most were big enough to take on a Cat and have it be a fair fight. And the kid had thrown a giant centipede right at his face.

Smith turned to look at his partner freaking out on the sidewalk, which gave Sam the opening he needed. He grabbed Smith's head, and clonked his forehead into the back of Smith's.

One second, Smith was in a new and hostile city that he had never been in and was freakishly hot all the time, with only two other stone-cold Agents for company. Then, for the 1.4 seconds that his head and Sams' were touching each other, he was in a familiar place, comfortably warm, with lots of voices that didn't know him, but welcomed him as a friend, an ally, and he suddenly knew what it truly meant to belong.

And then he wasn't.

He was back in a scary unknown place with people that wouldn't talk to him, a job to do, and a partner freaking out on the ground.

Needless to say, it was crushing.

He was so lonely…

Sam stepped past the near-catatonic Smith, and lept onto Agent Jones, who had managed to get the Larva off of his face, but hadn't gotten off the ground yet.

Knocking him back down, Sam pinned his arms to the side, holding the Agent mostly still. Again, he smacked his forehead into the agents, but it worked for an entirely different reason this time. This time, it worked because he had knocked the back of his head into a concrete sidewalk, giving Jones a minor concussion and knocking him resolutely unconscious.

Rubbing his head and looking up, he checked to see that no one had saw. Satisfied, he grabbed the Larva off the ground, and checked Agent Jones' pulse. Steady, so he wasn't dead. He was bleeding a bit, but he'd live.

"Come on, help me drag him inside." Sam told the other Agent. Agent Smith didn't move for a few seconds, but finally came to a decision. "Will…Will you do that again? Please?"

Sam looked at the Agent. He looked into his eyes, and saw complete honesty. He truly wanted to be a part of the Swarm. He couldn't blame him, but he did blame himself. To give him that, and then take it away, just as suddenly… It must have been horrible. Sam had eschewed normal combat, and left them alive, but this was a thousand times worse. But looking at the Agent, he couldn't stop himself from saying: "Yes."

The Agent nodded, still in somewhat of a trance, but helped him pull his own partner into the house, where Sam pulled out his gun and handcuffs. (Which he then used on Jones.)He had used the few seconds before he opened the door to reach out and grab Jones' mind, and saw what he feared most. It was lucky it was bugs, as he wasn't sure what would've had to do were it, say, Elephants.

Agent Smith sat at the dining table, while Sam was putting a towel under Agent Jones' head. "Will he be alright?" Smith managed. "Hmm? Oh yeah, he'll be fine. Head wounds bleed a lot. He should be coming around soon." The second he had finished, Jones' eyes snapped open and he immediately started yelling.

"HEY! I'm an Agent of the government! You can't do this to me! Release me NOW, or I'll…"

"You'll what?" Sam interrupted.

"I will bring down the wrath of the Agency on you…."

Sam looked at him. He got the impression that he would have made a wiggling motion with his hands, had they not been cuffed. Instead, he just wiggled his eyebrows."Well, hold off on the whole death-before-defeat and ass-kicking and wrath for a few minutes while I explain myself, alright?"

"Fine." He laid back on the towel. Sam stood up and started talking to both of them. "Alright, where should I start… Okay, have either of you ever played StarCraft?" They both shook their heads. "Okay, well…In it, there's a species called the Zerg, a collective that evolves its own weapons, and spreads across the universe. Now, in the games, they're ruthless, sadistic monsters whose smallest unit can tear anything apart in seconds. Well, they've landed in my backyard, and I feel it's my responsibility to ensure they survive, because I've always liked the Swarm, as they're called. As far as I can tell, in real life, they just want to survive, and I don't blame them. Do you understand?" Jones shook his head, while Smith slowly nodded.

Smith seemed to be regaining some composure, and he asked one question.

"What do you need us to do?"

Agent Brown was starting to get concerned. They'd been in there for at least five minutes, no questioning could take this long. Just when he was about to call it in, he saw Agent Smith coming back around the tree cover.

"Smith, what's taking so long?" Smith looked at him somewhat reproachfully, before answering. "The door was somewhat barricaded, we had to find another way in. Jones is going to wait here and stake it out for the Arronax kid." Brown didn't actually give a shit, and opened the van door. "Come on. We gotta go hand in the report. We'll be back tomorrow to pick up Jones."

Smith shut the door, and Brown started the engine. As he pulled out of the parking space, he could have sworn he saw someone peeking at him from a window…

Sam watched the van pull away from the curb through the window shades. He turned around, letting the shades fall back into place. He took a quick stock of the situation. He had one Agent cuffed to a chair, another he had connected to the swarm with promises that he would connect him permanently, and a drone mutating itself into a Hatchery inside a house.

Speaking of which… He looked back at the chrysalis that was, at some point, a drone. Unlike in the games, it didn't just expand while it was mutating. From the sides, he could see some fleshy tentacles that had emerged, and were wrapping themselves around the house, By this point, the chrysalis had expanded to about ten feet in diameter, and it barely fit inside the room.

The tendrils had twined themselves around the stair's banisters, around what furniture was left, and had seriously messed up the plumbing in the house. Suddenly, he got a thought from the Drone inside that it had, in fact, mostly finished. He quickly moved back, out of splatter range.

When he gave the okay, the Drone used what had been a mandible to pierce the chrysalis. It punctured, and then ripped into shreds as fluid, more tendrils, Creep, and more fleshy coating (Which immediately started growing on the walls) exploded outwards, leaving only a sort of bone "bowl", which immediately started filling up with a green liquid that he could tell was corrosive just from looking at it.

As he watched, it kept growing, following the tendrils it had used to scout the houses' layout and reinforcing the house where it needed it, converting the entire house to a massive, living, Zerg organism. Walking through the house, he looked at some of the changes the Zerg had made to the building. The bedroom had several glowing organic "Lamps" that seemed to use bioluminescence, the bed had been completely converted into a fleshy block that was springier and more comfortable than any other bed he'd ever seen. He opened a closet, and found a fleshy pod inside. He had no idea what that was for. He'd ask later.

He walked back into the kitchen, where the handcuffed Agent Jones was watching the Zerg devour the kitchen around him confused. The fridge had been opened, and saw that the whole thing was full of pods roughly a foot in diameter that glowed faintly. Hesitantly, he took an apple out the bag on the counter, and pushed it through the membrane of the pod, which immediately filled with liquid, visibly preserving the apple perfectly. Even the chair that Agent Jones was sitting on had an organism incorporated into it, making the crappy, ruined foam seat an excellent chair, conforming to the Agent sitting in it.

In the sink, tendrils had wrapped themselves around the faucet, creating a natural filter that, turning the faucet on, made pure, cool water pour out and into the drain. Looking down said drain made him notice that the electric disposal that kept the drain from getting jammed had been replaced with its organic counterpart, making sure absolutely no stray nutrients escaped. Several other kitchen appliances had been replaced like the disposal, and Sam could see a Juicer, a Blender, and several other creatures he couldn't identify sitting on the counter. And, of course, the whole house, carpet, tile, stairs, and every horizontal surface not already covered by a Zerg furnishing was covered in a layer of Creep roughly an inch thick, with the floor being two inches.

He walked back out into the living room, carrying the bag of groceries with him. Now that it was mostly done with the conversion, he could sense that the Zerg was hungry. He dumped the rest of the pizza into the liquid filled-pit. It had a consistency roughly like Jello, so it didn't splatter. He tossed the bag of bread in, followed by the rest of the cereal (And the box.), then the milk.

He didn't notice that all the cans in the bag had started to severely tax it's maximum weight, and before he could react, the bag tore, dropping a can of tomato sauce and a can of chicken noodle soup into the pool. It dissolved the aluminum-tin cans in seconds.

He stared at the dissolving tomatoes, and started dropping all of the cans in, one after the other. Again, gone near instantly. He didn't even want to think what it would do to human skin.

Looking in the bag, he realized that he had completely forgotten to leave any food for himself, completely devoted to giving the pool all of the food. Looking around, he remembered a fanfic he had read once, about Starcraft. It explained Zerg in detail, mentioning how most Zerg creatures just ate the Creep for nutrition.

He reached down, and grabbed a handful of the goo from the carpet. The hollow was quickly filled in by the surrounding Creep. He held the purple goo up to his face, and smelled it. It had absolutely no scent. He prepared himself, and before he could think twice, crammed most of the purple goop into his mouth.

He didn't really have to chew. That was the first thing he noticed. It was sort of like watery clay in texture. It also didn't taste as bad as he thought. He thought, what with what it had absorbed from the carpet and the general crud in the house, it would taste horrible, even poison him. Instead, it tasted almost like nothing, with the only perceivable flavor being almost Vanilla-like, but…not quite. It wasn't bad, just…Bland. He could live off it, he was sure of that. The only downside he could see was that he wasn't sure of, was how it would, well, "exit."

He finished the handful, and found that he was incredibly full. Curious. His hand was unmarked, as it more-or-less held together, dripping as a whole, unlike water. He ate the whole thing, ergo, there was none on his hand.

Suddenly, he was brought out of his study of the Creep by Agent Jones tackling him.

(Eugh. This chapter was a bitch to write. Sorry it took so long, but I had to figure out a plausible way for Sam to escape. Anyway, here's hoping the next one doesn't take QUITE as long. Ah well, serves me right for thinking up a scenario before thinking about how he escapes it. Hergé, you did a damn good job at writing stories, but man is it hard to do.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Tesseract Creep**

**8**

Jones had managed to escape his cuffs by waiting until the growing flesh made a gap in the wood the cuffs were wrapped around, and then stepping over them to get them around to his front, where he simply unlocked them. Slowly opening the kitchen door, he found the little traitorous bastard with his back to him, dumping a bunch of cans into the rimmed pit of goo, which dissolved them instantly. Maybe he could use that?

He ducked back when the kid looked around, and then grabbed some of the thick goo carpeting the entire house. He turned back around, and Jones started to creep up on him, The kid started to eat the goo, which disgusted the Agent. How could he eat that? He didn't know what it was, nor what it was made from or even came from. As he finished the handful, Jones was almost directly behind him, and tensed up, preparing to strike…

Sam hit the floor first, as Agent Jones landed on top of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Larvapanic and start crawling towards thye fight to help. Sam pushed aginst the floor, using what little leverage he had, to push Agent Jones towards the approaching three larva.

Jones was about to stand up and attack Sam again, but one of the Larva jumped onyo his leg, causing him to get distracted. Sam managed to get a second wind, stand, and run the few feet to where Jones had managed to detach the Larva from his leg. It fought bravely, but it was fighting something ten times it's size.

It fell off onto the floor, and then Jones punted it across the room. Sam tried to catch it, but he wasn't quick enough, and it flew right through his hands. It spun lazily a few feet, before landing with an anticlimactic "Ploop!" sound into the pool of acid.

Sam felt it being digested, felt the house-turned-hatchery realize it, and try to render the acid inert, but it wasn't quick enough. Every Zerg organism on the planet felt it being digested, screaming in pain through the psychic connection, dissolving into nothing. The Larva producer felt it, the other Larva felt it, even Agent Smith, miles away, felt it and made Agent Brown pull over so he could vomit.

But Sam felt it the worst, standing there, watching it die, unable to help. The fact that Agent Jones took the oppurtunity to punch him in the face didn't help, either. He fell onto the floor, tasting blood and enamel, and got so very angry.

Sam slowly stood, and spat the blood at Jones, staining his otherwise impossible-to-mark suit with a dark red stain on the lapel. He spoke one word with the blood. "Murderer."

"What?" Agent Jones said, confused. Sam took a slow step towards the Agent, and spoke again. "You son of a bitch. You don't even realize what you've done, do you? That Larva could've been a Zergling, a Hydralisk, even an Ultralisk. Maybe even a drone. But now it never will. Because you murdered it in cold blood." Jones tried to interrupt, but he couldn't, not when Sam was speaking with the full fury of the Zerg Swarm, not when Jones suddenly realized Sam was right in his face, yelling: "You didn't even care, did you?! To you, it was just an annoying bug! It didn't do anything but try to protect me, and you killed it! Killed it without a second thought! You come into MY Hatchery! Threaten ME! And threaten one of the few things that actually accept me, that I don't have to put on an act for to be liked, loved, and safe around! I don't even care about that! But if you think that you can just waltz in, and START KILLING MY LARVA, THEN I HOPE THERE'S A HELL, JUST SO YOU CAN FUCKING BURN IN IT!"

Jones' back hit the wall that had been on the other side of the room, Sam still fuming in his face. "GET. OUT.;" Jones didn't even realize Sam had said anything, at first. "I said, GET. OUT. I'm giving you one goddamn chance, which is more than you gave me. If you want to see the sun set today and rise tomorrow, then take that chance. Because you won't get another one."

Jones didn't even think, he was just running. Some part of Sam had triggered something primal in his brain, and that something was screaming to be somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere but here. Sam watched him go, and yelled, "And don't you fucking DARE come back!" As Jones ran down the sidewalk, Sam stood in the doorway, and suddenly realizing how tired he was, sagged back into the house.

He fell back into the fleshy couch, and a tentacle shut the door, before a sphincter-like organism slid over the door, making the rotten door stronger than it had ever had before. Sam was completely exhausted, and was using the time to think. He was strained, mentally and physically, and had always been. He'd need an Overmind, and a decent defense force, so that this couldn't happen again. He'd need a spawning pool, and before Jones came back.

Sam knew he would. It was his job, and Jones wasn't the kind of person to leave a job unfinished, even if he got a little overzelous. He'd bring soldiers, with what influences he had. What influence did he have? Sam didn't know a damn thing about the Agents. He just sort of assumed they were some sort of Men-in-Black deal. Which made them even more dangerous.

He was taxing himself. He'd need to do something about that, too. Reaching out, he asked a Larva to morph into a drone, and help him up. He laid his head back, and rested for about five minutes while it did. He was brought out of it by the new Drone poking him in the knee. Had he even slept? It felt like he had just sat down. He heaved himself up, and started tipping, before the Drone caught him and put him on its back. He gave it directions to head to the backyard, where he observed his tiny patch of land.

The backyard wasn't much. A dried-up pool, roughly kidney-shaped. A tree, if you could still call it that. It was not much more than a long stick that all the branches had fallen off of. Than the Creep reached it. It had been contained inside the house, not exiting the front door at Sam's order, but now that the Drone had opened the back door, (Opened was a relative term. It couldn't work the sliding door, so it just smashed it open.) the Creep was rapidly expanding into the backyard, filling the pool. He stopped it from going past the gates on wither side, however, to keep the house looking as normal as possible.

As the Creep reached it, it felt the tree, hesitated, and then allowed itself to be absorbed into the tree. It took a few seconds, but by then the Creep had fully infested the tree. It connected itself to the swarm, and it started sprouting at an amazing rate, fully replenishing the missing leaves and branches, and restoring the tree to it's former glory. It began to photosynthesize expanding until it had grown into the small sapling that it had been when it was planted, and when it stopped requiring energy, relinquished the surplus to the Creep, which had turned the bark of the tree a deep purple.

Looking around the previously-dead yard, Sam was amazed. What had been dead dirt and rocks, was now a living carpet of Creep that dissolved the rocks and absorbed them into the Swarms total nutrients, which it stored in the Creep. He shook himself out of it, remembering what he had come out here to do. He told the Drone to set him down, and then morph into a Spawning pool inside the pool, which now had a thick layer of purple slime coating the bottom.

He leaned against the tree, and before the Drone started morphing into the structure, made a suggestion. It wasn't quite a word, just a thought that it sent to him as a suggestion. It spoke of becoming much stronger, of ceasing entirely to be an outside observer, by infesting himself. Sam looked at himself. He was exhausted, in every capacity. He swept a finger through his mouth, feeling a tooth or two wiggle that most certainly hadn't before, and when he brought his finger out, it was smeared with blood.

The collective wasn't kidding when it said it would be taxing.

He remembered something he saw inside, in the closet. A sort of pod. He brought his mind back into connection with the collective, and asked if it was what he thought it was used for.

"Ready for that, are you? Very well. We can handle ourselves for an hour or three. Go, and infest yourself." Sam stumbled inside, almost tripping over the lip of the broken door. He managed to make to the closet, and told the pod to open. It slid apart, and Sam stepped in. He really hoped he hadn't just entered the excretanary organs of the Hatchery.


	9. Chapter 9

Hey guys, sorry this took so damn long. School's started, and that saps my creativity like you wouldn't believe. This is cobbled together, improvised from a notebook where I'd scribbled the basic outline of this chapter in shaky unreadable writing, which then got soaked by a freak thunderstorm (In Las Vegas. What the fuck?). And then after I'd dried it out and tried to copy it over, the writing went in a completely different direction than I ever could have planned, with no planning whatsoever. Anyway, expect updates to get a little less frequent as I, you know, try not to fail High School. By the way, have I mentioned that when I don't update, I feel guilty? That hasn't helped.

**Tesseract Creep**

**9**

Unsure about his decision to relinquish himself to infestation, Sam paused. To properly build a defense force would take longer than he could conceal his infested self, and that was a risk he could not take. He mentally ordered the pod he had contained himself inside to open, and felt the Collective recoil. "Overmind! Explain yourself!"

Sam sighed, and mentally responded. "Just… had second thoughts." He felt the Collective try to recollect itself, confused and attempting to formulate an argument. "O…Overmind! You cannot defend the Hive Cluster on your own human tenacity! You are injured and exhausted, and you require our assistance!"

"I know, just… later. I still need to look human for a bit. Is there some alternative?" Almost before he had finished thinking it, he heard voices, almost exactly like the Collective, start to suggest plans inside his head, but they were silenced by the Collective drowning them out, with less voices than before… "Yes. We could not transfer all the old Overmind knew into your puny human skull, and one thing we were forced to let evaporate into the Ether was the genetic information of most Zerg strains. Including Overlords."

Sam was crushed. How could they continue without Overlords? Sam was amazed he was able to keep control of what he had thus far. It would be impossible to keep track of more than a single Zerg unit without them. "However," the Collective interrupted his thought process. "We can recover them. We must return to the Meteorite, and pull the information from the corpses of the other Larva contained within, and then we can continue the subjugation of this planet."

The voices in the back of Sam's head caught this last sentence even before he did. He listened to the whispers, and spoke. "Subjugation? You never mentioned that. When precisely were you going to mention that part?" Mentally, Sam could feel that the Collective had made a mistake. "You misunderstand, Overmind. We have the same goals. We think alike!"

"No, I'm not sure we do…" Sam trailed off. He quickly changed the subject, back to the initial subject. "Anyway. What can we do to defend the Hive Cluster until then?" Tentatively, the Collective explained. "There is a smaller pod, thinner, but just as tall inside the closet." Almost on cue, a small fleshy aperture slid open at the top, revealing a Leech-like creature, but clear, and larger than any Leech Sam had ever seen before.

"Remove the extractor, and place it upon your arm." Sam leaned over, and ate a small handful of Creep to prepare himself. He then reached into the pod with both hands, and lifted the Leech out, before placing it onto his shoulder, like a particularly disgusting parrot. He slid his shirt under the Leech, replacing it onto bare skin. Reaching into it's mind, he could tell it was coating his shoulder with a secretion that numbed it. He was yanked out of it's mind when he realized he could no longer move his arm, for which he was thankful when it plunged a large internal needle into a major vein.

Sam didn't even feel himself hit the floor.

He heard the whispers first, at the edge of unconsciousness.

He was standing on the edge of a tower, so high above anything that a dense fog obstructed his view of the base. Something tugged at his foot, and he fell onto his back. There was a rope, no, not a rope, a fleshy tentacle trying to pull him off to his doom. Yet he could feel that while the tentacle was Zerg in origin, he could not control it, could not prevent himself from being dragged closer and closer to the edge.

Than the whispers became audible, just barely. And they gave instructions, told him to pull himself back from the edge, to the only decoration on the tower's perfectly flat roof. A pillar. Again, he couldn't see far enough upwards to distinguish anything but mist, but he could feel and was told by the whispers, yes, the pillar was good, he needed to climb the pillar, but he needed to pull himself away from the edge first.

But the Tentacle wouldn't release him. It clung to him, like a mother to her child, without any of the love. It would hold onto him for as long as he lived, breaking his leg if that was what it took to keep a grip. He couldn't pull away from it, and it pulled him towards the edge.

And then he felt a change. He had not the strength to do it himself, so the whispers changed from mere voices that he wasn't even sure he had heard on the wind, to something that he couldn't see, not properly, but very definitely felt. A hand grabbed his arm, pulling him away from the tentacle, but delicately, knowing that he couldn't stretch like that without being injured.

Than it was joined by a claw, than a pair of blades dulled as not to hurt him, than the leg of an insect, even a massive tusk tapered down so that he could grab it in his hand, but it wasn't enough. The tentacle still pulled harder than they could combined. He slid off the edge, but was suspended, barely, by the hands and claws and legs holding him up.

And then they were joined by a thousand more, all pulling and supporting and holding him up, making him rise back onto the rooftop, and helping him further, grabbing his arms, which even now grabbed onto the pillar, hoisting himself as far as he could into the mist, and when he could climb no longer, they all grabbed his hands and climbed for him, until he had regained what little of his strength that he could against the constant pulling of the solitary tentacle rising from the dark mist below, and pulled himself through the last few feet into the bright light illuminating the mist he had climbed through, and was blinded.

And then it went just as dark as before, before he heard one thing. The Collective. But not as he had before. It wasn't the symphony of voices he had heard before, but one voice. He recognized it. It had been part of the millions of voices that made up the collective before, but he could tell it was entirely unique. It was by itself now, and only now he realized what it truly was. The Old Overmind, which had cunningly snuck itself into his head, taking control of the rest of the voices, controlling them by fear to do what he instructed, sneak and lie and pulling the strings so demandingly that he didn't even have to pull his own strings. He made them pull their own. And then it spoke.

"You resist. A pity. You had so much potential for my uses. No matter, I shall find another. And then I shall clean up my loose ends…"


	10. Tesseract Creep QnA 1

**INTERMISSION**

QnA

Hey guys, sorry if this isn't an actual chapter and even in a different format, I'm using the on-site text program. Anyway, school isn't giving me much time to write or even be that interesting, but I'm going to try with this two-part...question...answerey...thing. Ask me questions about my personal little brood of Zerg, about the relative universes, even about the later plot! (Although I can't guarantee you'll get a straight answer..) I can't bring you a story, but here's the next best thing. Also, I haven't heard much from you guys as of late, and I'm trying to make sure you're still hoping for chapters.

Also, I'm currently typing this at 12:45 Las Vegas time, so you may not get answers straight away. Don't worry, barring a massive case of amnesia, I'll keep writing in some degree, and post chapters at some point.

That's about it, though. Turtwig, you can probably skip this chapter when you're archiving them. But you may want to keep the answer bit somewhere in the archives.


	11. Tesseract Creep QnA 2

Teesseract Creep

**QnA part 2**

Ah, finally! I was worried no one actually wanted to know anything about the story! Thanks to Turtwig163 and Anonyoussc2 for finally asking questions. I'll answer in character for Turtwigs questions, and I'll give anony as close to a straight answer as I can.

(Also, I've edited these slightly to appease the english teacher in my 't worry, the questions haven't changed.)

**Q**: Sam, how does it feel ti be controlling the Zerg Swarm?

**A**: It's… complicated. I've played the games, and when they're just particularly annoying lines of code onscreen in the form of a Marine, or a Medic, I don't feel bad about killing them. (Okay, the screams get a little disturbing after a while.) But if it comes down to it and some crazy fucker calls in the military? I'm not sure I could kill them. Heh, so of course I ended up gaining control of one of the most ruthless groups of creatures in the universe. Actually, thinking about it, you were probably asking physically. Imagine… Imagine being accepted without question, with having people in the real world who aren't just people, they're extensions of your consciousness, and just like those extensions, you can't lie to them and they can't lie back, nor would you want to. It's also somewhat like having a very small amount of morphine in your bloodstream all the time, being constantly replenished. It's like being omnipitent, but only with people who agree with you. Did I mention it's complicated?

**Q**: Tell us about yourself, Zerg Consciousness.

**A**: We are one, but many. Cotermimus with the Overmind, he does not truly reside in his mortal form anymore. We are part of him, as he is now part of us, as he always shall be. Even should he die, he shall not, for we shall remember him and shall live again as he did before. We speak in many voices, and would be regarded as figments of an imagination would the Overmind not give us form. We are unique, picking how best to serve the Overmind. He does not know how to control us, and that is what makes him Overmind. We would kill for the overmind, but the Overmind would not have us kill but prefer us to infest, to integrate more into the Swarm. We agree, and even were we and the Overmind not one and the same, we would agree. Others would have us as murderers of galaxies, and we would expand, but stranded in the physical realm. We would follow the Overmind's bidding, for his bidding is our bidding, and we all speak simutaneously, from the smallest and the weakest to the largest and the strongest. We and the Overmind are equal, and he preferrs it thus, or he or we would become mad with power. Such was the way of the old Overmind. We would vanquish any foe that he wished, and spare any that we can. We would follow our Overmind, his name be Sam, to the edge of the galaxy and across the empty void, and continue forever until we returned to exactly where we left. We are one, but many, and we would create a physical and metaphysical utopia for ourselves, and the Overmind would retire and become one of us. Another Overmind may be found, but we know, tired as he would be, that Overmind-Sam would be the true Overmind.

And now for Anony's question, which Is somewhat spoilerish, so I'll heve to be somewhat vague.

**Q**: Dude, how will you incorperate the 'Toss?

**A**: Well, I can't answer that fully, but let's just say that it's kinda hard to ignore more Zerg spreading right after you vaporised all of them. And are the Protoss really the kind of people to leave a job half done?


	12. Chapter 10

****Sorry for disappearing off the map like that. School just kinda saps all my creative willpower, and to be honest, I had to force myself to write this. Needless to say, don't expect regular updates for a while. Without further ado, here's

**Tesseract Creep**

**10**

Blurry. Everything was blurry. Sam blinked. Still blurry. He realized he wasn't wearing his glasses anymore. They must have fallen off. Fallen off when he… did what exactly? He had quite obviously hit the floor and then his glasses fell off, but what had caused him to hit the floor?

A whisper that was not his spoke to him inside his head. He had lost a lot of blood. That would do it, sure as anything. But why would he lose a lot of blood? It took him a second to realize the implications of the whisper. It was different from the Collective. It wasn't speaking, not in a way that he could decipher as English. But he could still understand their intentions.

Their? So there was more than one creature. His own mind rebelled, saying of course you idiot, of course there is. That wasn't the Collective, not that thing that lied and snuck about and tried to murder you! This was! These whispers were what he could perceive as multiple minds on the edge of his!

So the Zerg Collective had been cleansed of the Overmind. It still felt wrong, however, to call it the Collective. He would call it… He didn't know what he would call it. He'd figure something out later.

Slowly, the rest of the day and the day before slid back into his head. The whispers helped fill in the gaps. The meteorite, the Larva, The collective, the Zerg goddamn Swarm! He was lying on his face on the floor of a house that had been infested by the Zerg, the real Zerg! He was living a third of the Starcraft fanbase's dream!

And he realized that through all of it, he had been helped along, kept his sanity, arranged his thoughts, despite his insistence to listen to the Overmind, by the voices that had been there the whole time. He had been such an idiot… The voices were a part of him, and helped him insult himself.

They gave him "Moron?" "Dummkopf?" They would help him with anything. They wouldn't hesitate to do anything for him. He realized why he had listened to the Overmind at first. The Overmind's psychic presence had been overwhelming; of course he had been convinced that it was the Collective. But the rest of the Swarm, he could feel them, deep inside his mind, stored. Their presence was… uncomplicated. A fraction of the power that the Overmind wielded. But Sam was equal to them.

Suddenly, he felt them recede slightly, and then he realized he could move again. The whispers explained he had become too close to becoming a creature of thought, and they needed one of action. Sam stood, and collapsed immediately. How much blood had the Leech taken? He turned his head sluggishly to look at it. It sat there on the floor, looking at him expectantly. He felt inside its mind, and it told him its purpose. He flopped closer to it with unresponsive limbs. He could've crushed it. Made an example out of it, to the rest to know not to come so close to killing him next time.

But the whispers worried, and said no, that was the way of the old Overmind. Don't. So Sam didn't kill this creature that had, under the Overmind's influence, tried to kill him by doing its job. It had been doing its job. He forgave it, and picked it up. He rolled back around, grabbed onto the wall, and dragged himself up the crappy wallpaper. He had searched its mind to find its purpose, which was to draw blood and release it to be processed.

He placed it back into the small pod in the closet, which he realized was linked to a complicated system of veins and pods and things that looked unnervingly like a high School Chemistry set made entirely of flesh. The Leech surrendered its store of blood to the piping, and Sam watched, entranced. Mostly because his body didn't have nearly enough blood to go around and it was basically getting him high.

The blood swirled in one pod, before draining into two pods, one that stored a small sample of the blood, and the other mixed it with a greenish-grey liquid, which spun around in organic centrifuge before being filtered into what looked like a pair of lungs, drained out, mixed with a bunch of orange liquid, and so on before the final result drained into a small sac, which solidified, hardened, grew a small amount of armor, and finally released itself onto the floor as an egg.

Sam slowly slid back to the floor, covered in Creep as it was. He reached out and picked up the egg. It was roughly the size of a baseball, and translucent, but more like a blurry window than anything else. He could see something moving around inside it, but he couldn't tell what it was. The whispers stopped him from asking the egg directly, as they were inside his mind. They knew he would like it, so Sam knew he would like it. They wouldn't lie to him.

He suddenly realized how dehydrated he was, and picked some Creep off the floor below him. Before it could slide back in to fill the gap, he saw that the carpet had been dissolved for its nutrients. It slid back over the hole in the Creep and Sam decided to ignore it, instead starting to slurp down the Creep. He finished it, and looked up, waiting for it to start replacing the lost blood. That was when he noticed the clock, and specifically, the time.

As childish as it was, he jumped at the time. Practically six, his parents must have been terrified! The whispers did not quite understand, what was this thing, this "Parents"? They could tell that it meant many things, protectors, the ones that birthed you, and the ones that loved you. That brought more questions. What was this "Love"? Sam almost chuckled at the cheesiness of it. Sam quieted them by telling them he'd explain later. He would. But right now, he had to leave his rudimentary Hive cluster. He would continue the legacy of the Swarm, but for the moment he was still human, and needed to continue Human tradition.

He grabbed a plastic, lidded box meant for storing food out of the kitchen and scooped in as much Creep as he could. He grabbed the new egg as well, and placed it into his pocket. He promised the whispers that he would return to the Hatchery later, and he shut the door. He was completely exhausted, Sam mused, and he would get home, have some more creep, and just go to bed after hiding that and the Egg.

Sam slowly realized he was awake. His bedsheets swam into visibility. They had been pulled off during the night, likely by him. His room became slightly less blurry. Since high school had started several months ago, this wonderful feeling was restricted to early morning. He certainly couldn't enjoy it after school, as he had to do everything else then, sacrificing sleep and time just to get things done, to allow him to enjoy life. Yesterday had been Sunday, and before that Saturday. Today was Monday. He could have quoted a certain cat, but he really didn't want to bother.

He had been attempting to return to that wonderful limbo, when he heard his dad's door open, the heavy thump-thump-thump of footsteps down the hall, and the inevitable-

"Wake up, Sam! We're late again!" His Dad hissed loudly from his doorway, to avoid waking the other two occupants of the house. Sam managed to force himself off the pillow. It was a true fight, with the side of his brain that wanted to sleep winning. Sam managed to gain the upper hand by commanding his hand to move quickly towards his face, palm open. The slap made his ears ring slightly, but he won the battle and attained consciousness. He grumbled to himself, but moved towards the living room to put on his shoes. He'd always just worn his clothes to bed. Last night was no different.

His backpack went on next, and then he'd light a fire under his dad. He walked back down the hallway, but stopped himself before he could knock on the door. Would two minutes matter? He was already late. He kept an ear out for his dad as he walked back out to the living room, and unzipped his bag. He retrieved the tub of Creep and the Egg, placing them both inside. The Egg had grown slightly, starting out roughly the size of a tennis ball, and was now just a tad larger. Reaching out to his swarm, he found that when he slept, the rest of his swarm slept as well.

This could be problematic. He liked sleeping.

Luckily, no one had counter attacked during the night, and his swarm was still whole. He sent a command through the psychic link, and fifty metres away an egg began to morph into a pair of Zerglings. He would ostensibly need them for defense now, as he had no doubt that there be another attack today.

He went down the hallway yet again, and looked into the room at his dad. He was doing what he always did, playing Scrabble on facebook. He went into a trance when he did so, paying attention to sudden or loud noises when they happened. Everything else appeared to fade into a blur in which Qs were worth ten points.

Two quick raps on the door managed to knock him out of his stupor. He jumped, looked up, looked at the time, and started moving as though he could run fast enough to get to five minutes earlier. Sam always stifled a chuckle as he did this.

They left the house, and entered the car, doors shutting and closing around them. The tiny white car pulled off the curb and sped past the hatchery. Sam took the few seconds to check that it still looked normal. Bigass tree in front, check. Weird ornamental fountain…thing, check. No Creep noticeable from-

"Okay, Sam, we gotta get moving faster next time, understand? I don't like having to tell you over and over again. You keep dragging your feet." His dad interrupted his thoughts, and confused him to boot.

"…What? We were- ARE late today because your alarm clock didn't go off, and you wake me up every morning when it does. What are you talking about?" His dad stopped, silent for a second. "I woke up late because you should have woken me up when your alarm clock went off."

"My alarm has been broken for nine months now. You tried to solve this by getting me another one as opposed to buying batteries. And the new one requires those same batteries but does not come with them."

"Ah, see? You should have told me this when you figured it out. We'll get you another one later."

"You said that five months ago. And then never did anything about it." This last sentence was said under Sam's breath, facing the car's window.

"What was that?" His dad said without looking at him.

"I said I need a haircut too." Also true. It was starting to get annoying, both by getting in his eyes and when the longer strands would get caught in his glasses. He'd accidentally yank hairs out whenever he took off his glasses.

"Heh, good point. Starting to look a bit oily." Again, keeping his eyes on the road. They pulled up to the school, and Sam simply opened the door and hopped out. Mostly by necessity, as the seat had broken and Sam's tinkering about with it had only resulted in a broken ankle. Even after it technically healed, the car remained broken. As did the ankle, Sam mused, limping slightly away from the car. He turned and tried to wave to his dad, but as soon as the door had shut, the car pulled back out. Sam watched it and it's stupid antenna topper pull away, before entering the building.

The school was surprisingly complicated. Looking at it in all it's two-storied glory from the "Quad" that took up half of the property, he tried to imagine the architect looking at his original sketch of it and thinking it looked good. The he contemplated how drunk he must've been at the time, and apparently throughout its construction, when there was still time to change it. Amazing he'd not died of alcohol poisoning.

A grossly overweight hall monitor on a small motorized cart usually used to transport tables drove towards him. She slid to a stop, and pulled out a device attached to her sizable waist.

"Name."

"This again, huh?"

"Every time someone comes in late. Name."

"We did this last week too. I'm amazed you don't remember it by now. Even the cafeteria lady remembers my name."

"Good for her. Name."

"Sam Arronax. 344048."

"Arronax, got it. Number."

"…344048. I just told…!"

"Thank you." She interrupted him to say nothing past that. A second later, a small piece of paper printed from the device on her waist. She tore it off and handed it to him. It was small, glossy, and said "TARDY SLIP" at the top in big bold letters that were still wet with ink. Below that was his name, the name of the school, his number, and then the time. And then it listed exactly what class he was late for and what time his other classes were, just in case someone forgot. She sped off, but where precisely escaped Sam. Maybe she was doing laps. He looked back down at the paper, towards the bottom, at one of the few that changed on it.

"Fifth infraction. Report to Dean's office for Detention at end of school day." Joy. He began walking towards his next class, wondering why it was listed as his fifth when he knew that by this point he'd been late at least 26 times. Maybe he broke it. He ducked under an unnecessarily gaudy staircase before continuing on past a gate, then a door to reach his class. World history. As he entered the class, he could see that half the class was asleep. Some dozed, some were simply slumped onto their desks, and one poor guy was actually snoring in the back rather obnoxiously. Only about two people were legitimately listening to the teacher, the rest talking, gossiping, or planning out how to screw with the sleeping people.

He handed his slip to the teacher and pushed through the gaps between the desks to his seat in the back. He sat, placing his backpack next to him, and slipped into the Zerg consciousness.

Sam swam through his own mind.

"Swam" was inaccurate. As was "drifting". They were close, but just couldn't quite convey the omniscience of simply being everywhere in a non-Euclidean space. He felt some primal terror, some sense that he REALLY shouldn't have been doing this, and that the human mind wasn't designed for it. He felt out, sending tendrils of thought outwards to locate the few entities within this sea of minds that had physical form. With some difficulty, he managed to locate the Hatchery.

To call it a house at this point was… inadequate. It was now a giant living organism, inhabiting a massive plaster and stucco shell. He reached inside, feeling the roof, feeling the stairs, feeling the windows. Hallways felt like… veins, almost, but larger. Electric wiring was much closer, and yet he could feel that this wasn't part of him. It was still foreign, having recognized its danger from his mind. He tore his mind from thoughts of doors, and focused his mind onto the Zerg Egg morphing in the living room.

He didn't have long to wait. Within a few minutes, the Egg was being obviously stretched to its capacity. Its outer layer remained strong, however, and required a catalyst. Instinctively, the two Zerglings pierced the fleshy cocoon, and nutritious fluid spilled out, before being reabsorbed by the Creep. The Zerglings clawed the "skin" of the Egg apart, and that too, was dissolved.

The Zerglings, Sam thought as he looked at them, were very definitely different. They looked like Velocirapters, but had a few dog-like qualities as well. They were large, yet low to the ground. Insectoid wings buzzed eagerly on their backs, and their maws were just as full of teeth as Sam imagined. They were looking around anxiously, as if expecting something to happen.

Sam realized they were very likely waiting for him. He reached, tentatively, out and touched the surface of their consciousness. Like touching water gently, small ripples of awareness fanned out from his intrusion. They took the small contact, and followed it back, before he was soon inside their minds. Not to control, but he could feel he could do that too. Instead, it was welcoming.

Their minds were not all like he imagined. Zerglings In-game were yappy little creatures, meant to be placed into groups so they could ruthlessly swarm their enemy and claw them to death. Based on that, he expected their first question, their psyche even, to be somewhat destructive and murderous.

Instead, they were like puppies. They were curious about everything, and the second he told them to relax, they immediately sped off to go look at this, and then this, and oooh what was that what does that do cute little Larva how does that work acid pool watch out for that stairs Creep-

He pulled himself from their mind, surprised at the sudden input of information. They followed out slightly, glowing like a flare in a cloud so that he could communicate without being inside. He was surprised by something else. In-game, they hatched in pairs. This meant that a single Larva hatched them, but it never had any significance in the game.

Outside, it meant that despite being two separate organisms, they were psychically linked, even stronger than he was to them. They thought with one mind, and when one needed the other to help move something for a better look or to climb on top of one another to get on top of something, they were already there, helping. Within minutes, they had bored themselves with their new environment and started racing each other to see if they could get any faster.

Sam watched, occasionally switching between their eyes and the sensory organs of the Hatchery. Once they found they didn't really have enough space for a decent race around the yard, they started to duel each other, practicing slashes and strikes until they exhausted themselves, only being able to stalemate without killing each other. Than they started looking around the yard again, burrowing occasionally to feel about underground. He had to stop them a few times from leaving the yard or climbing into sight of people in the surrounding yards, but they usually stopped after the first time.

The faint sound of a bell ringing could be heard in Sam's ears. Electronic, but echoing. He searched out his own mind and body, slamming back into it before the bell finished echoing. He'd lost track of time by this point, and apparently the class had ended. He slid out of his desk, and out of the classroom. On the way out, one of his classmates yelled to him "Hey Sam! Man, you was dead 'sleep this time! You get lucky last night?" Laughs came from a few students around the one who yelled, and they walked off.

"Guess you could say that…" Sam muttered to himself as he started walking to his next class. He made it to PE without incident; quickly ducking into the bathroom attached to the locker room before anyone saw him. Another class he was ignoring. He placed the backpack on top of the toilet seat, and opened it up to check the egg.

It was still growing, no longer stunted by unconsciousness. It had passed the size of a basketball, larger than the size of both his fists balled up together. The pocket of the backpack obviously wouldn't hold it much longer.

Well, he'd burn that bridge when he came to it. For now, he placed the backpack higher onto the back of the toilet, and sat on the seat himself. He could stay hidden here, long as no one looked under the stall. No one would, because once someone did then everyone would, and they all had to use the stalls at some point.

He slid back into the Zerglings' minds just in time to stop them from trying to crawl into the fridge. He watched them play, just entertaining themselves and him by sheer nature of existence. He was enjoying himself for the first time in quite a long time.

"Breach on my mark. 3…2…1…MARK!"


End file.
